Auburn-area brothers help film Discovery's crab epic

The Discovery Channel's new saltwater epic "Deadliest Catch" is airing over the next 10 weeks with Auburn-area siblings Todd and Doug Stanley playing pivotal, behind-the-scenes roles.Doug, an Ophir resident, and Todd, who calls Lotus home, were onboard in October and January as part of a small army of production personnel documenting the month-long "Deadliest Season" king crab and snow crab fishing free-for-alls. The Discovery Channel filmmakers followed the fleet through its short, perilous but very lucrative seasons on the fickle Bering Sea off Alaska."Deadliest Catch" debuted Tuesday with an episode on the start of last October's king crab season called "Greenhorns." The first installment will be rerun at 8 p.m. Tuesday, immediately followed at 9 p.m. with "Long Sleepless Nights." Tuesdays should be a small-screen roller-coaster ride of adrenaline blasts through the spring.Doug, 41, and Todd, 34, leapfrogged flights up the West Coast to get to the fishing outpost of Dutch Harbor in the fall and last January. That's 2,400 miles away from the comparatively mild winters of the foothills.Extreme film-making in deadly conditions is just the latest chapter in adventuresome lives for both Rocklin-raised brothers. They've filmed MTV shoots and news magazine shows. Todd's been a guide on the Amazon River as well as in the Grand Canyon.But the Alaska shoot took them to a time and place where boats were sinking and fishermen were drowning in the quest for a share of the $80 million catch. Fourteen million pounds of crab was up for grabs and five days on the water could earn a man - or woman - as much as $140,000. It could also cost them their lives.The Stanleys made it out of the "Deadliest Catch" shoot alive but sobered by their experiences. Doug had left behind a sheath of letters to send to family and friends if he didn't make it back. Talk about pre-planning.ESCALANTE NOT FORGOTTENFormer Placer County resident and nationally known calculus teacher Jaime Escalante may be a decade or so removed from the movie that inspired a generation of students and teachers but he's not forgotten.On April 28, state and national leaders - along with more than 800 students from the Sacramento region - will gather in Sacramento's Crest Theatre to commemorate his service to California education.The Bolivia-born educator turned a ton of lives around in east L.A. after starting an Advanced Placement Calculus program at Garfield High School. Most famously, he became a national hero for the feisty teachers who make their own rules when students passed the AP test but had their scores invalidated by testers because they thought cheating had taken place to produce the results. Most of the students re-tested and were re-instated. The against-all-odds plot read like a movie script and it didn't take long for Hollywood to pick up on the dramatic angle. With Latino stars Edward James Olmos playing Escalante and Lou Diamond Phillips as a talented but troubled student, the ensuing "Stand and Deliver" won an Oscar nomination. The 1988 film continues to be one of those inspirational must-sees for teachers new and experienced.Now retired, Escalante had most recently moved back to his native country. In the early 1990s, he taught for a short time in Sacramento while living in Placer County. Conflicting reports say either south Auburn or the Granite Bay area.Dubbed "A Celebration of Citizenship, Education and Service to California," by its organizer, the Center for Youth Citizenship, the April 28 event will be a reunion on at least two fronts. Students who graduated from Garfield will hold a first-time reunion with Escalante. And Olmos will also be on hand to offer a few words of praise to Escalante.LOW-RATING "MINUTES"Ultra-distance runner Dean Karnazes finally popped up on "60 Minutes" March 27 but, if Neilsen numbers are any indication, his exploits were greeted with a collective yawn by the American public. The show was the lowest-rated segment of "60 Minutes" so far this season ... "60 Minutes" and Mike Wallace were in Nevada City last year for a segment on rebel running back Ricky Williams, late of the Miami Dolphins. Auburn's been in the spotlight in the late 1990s when the show took the Placer County District Attorney's Office to task for prosecuting a three strikes case involving a garage burglary that it dubbed "The Bicycle Thief." ... And going back to 1983, the nation's Sunday night viewing audience heard the story of 17-year-old Dirk Karde. The Loomis teen had inhaled the toxic insecticide chlordane as a baby after his father had sprayed the perimeter of their house to kill bugs. Karde's family settled with Standard Oil after launching a $1 million suit ... Karnazes, who's out on the road pitching his book "Ultramarathon Man," will be signing copies at 6 p.m. next Thursday at Grass Valley's The Book Seller. He's the well-cut endurance machine who ran 260-plus miles without sleep - the equivalent of 10 marathons. True to form, he'll be leading hardy souls on what is being described as "a short run." My question. What's a short run for a guy like Dean Karnazes? The Journal's Gus Thomson can be reached at gust@goldcountrymedia.com.